President Obama's visit gave affirmation

Friday

Jun 13, 2014 at 10:38 AMJun 13, 2014 at 12:46 PM

By Clive McFarlane TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

I believe there is a desire in most, if not all, of our children to be great and exceptional, and I further believe that the quality of their lives reflects the extent to which families, communities and the nation affirm the possibility of this desire.

We had such an affirmation Wednesday, when the president of the United States stood in line with the Worcester Technical High School principal, the Worcester superintendent of schools and the mayor of the city to shake hands with 301 young men and women clinging to their freshly minted high school diplomas.

The moment was magical, but its strength was in the realization that it was brought to us not by some wizardry but by the commitment and investment of the students, their families, their community and their country.

President Obama, who gave the commencement address, touched on this when he told the students to remember that the successful completion of their high school years was made possible because "somebody somewhere invested" in their success.

"I know that's true for me," he said.

"I was raised by a single mom with the help of my grandparents. We didn't have a lot of money growing up. At times, we struggled. When my mom was going to school at the same time as she was raising my sister and me, we had to scrape to get by.

"But we had a family who loved me and my sister. And I had teachers who cared about me. And ultimately, with the help of a community and a country that supported me, I was able to get a good education."

And for the most part Worcester has in many ways affirmed its belief in the greatness of its children, although such affirmations are often lost in the fog of our political battles.

The city had promised, for example, that the venue at which the president spoke, the DCU Center, would be vital to the economic well-being of residents. The facility, opened in 1982, was funded with an initial investment of $2 million in private pledges, $5 million in federal grants and $7.9 million in city-issued bonds.

But it wasn't easy to believe it then, with all the delays and controversies that preceded its construction.

The city promised in 1998, when the City Council took the highly controversial vote to put the vocational school under the jurisdiction of the Worcester Public Schools, that the move was worthwhile, and so too was the subsequent decision to build a new $90 million vocational school with 90 percent of the cost reimbursed by the state.

But it wasn't easy to see it then, when so many, including the Worcester Vocational Technical Alumni Association, thought those moves would spell the end of meaningful vocational education in the city.

There are dozens of other investments by the city in its young people that have been missed or taken for granted. Unfortunately, time has made such investments increasingly difficult. Indeed, we are living in an era in which investments in the things that make us great, like education, are being characterized as a waste of taxpayers' money.

And that was the gift of Wednesday's Worcester Tech high school graduation and presidential visit.

It gave us a moment, fleetingly though it may have been, to bask in the affirmation of all the things we have said and all the things we have done to help our children believe that the distance between them and someone as powerful as the president of the United States is as close as a handshake.